The way we make friends has changed. We’re more mobile, and technology puts us in contact with people around the world. I’ve got an artist friend in India, a guy in Ukraine that sold me two vintage Soviet chess sets, a friend in Brazil who bought a Nakamichi cassette deck from me.
That’s how I met David. He bought a gorgeous tube amp I’d had customized by a friend in Idaho. What drew him in was my description of the amp. David was a writer and he knew one when he read one. So, we shared those interests, audio and writing.
He was a mystery. Extremely intelligent, and like all East Coasters, opinionated and pugnacious. When we talked about writing, he let it slip that he’d written a rather famous book under a nom de plume. I didn’t push to learn what book it was or to find out who he was. “You’ve read it,” he assured me.
I started calling him Salman Rushdie which was hilarious because David was Jewish. When I visited him, his wife, and a trio of championship Cocker Spaniels, in New Jersey, I brought him my novels, “The Last Ghost Dancer” and “If Every Month Were June”, but he said, “Thanks, but I’m not going to read them.”
“No obligation,” I said. Writers always share books with each other, and frankly, no one needs an assignment. The book calls you when its time. “Besides, what if you’re better than me?” he said in all seriousness.
Now, at this point you’re wondering if he was a fraud. If this was some elaborate ruse. A grift of some kind. Not a chance. He and his wife were salt of the earth. She’s a registered nurse, and he was lucky he had her. He had an affliction that caused internal bleeding. She’d saved him more than once. He was living on borrowed time, he told me. I didn’t know it then, but he was addicted to painkillers.
Maybe his precarious health is why he kept people at arm’s length. “Friendships don’t last long with me,” he declared one day. But I have always had a soft spot for curmudgeons. Anyway, his dogs adored him. That’s how I judge people.
He’d been a Sixties activist but not necessarily a liberal. He had a deep distrust of the government, in part because of the constant clicks of FBI phone taps in those days. I think he considered me a bit of a Pollyanna while I though he was paranoid.
Sometimes he’d send me something he’d written, something that probably no one else will ever read. What an imagination. Great storyteller. I think it was his idea that we write something together. I’d write a chapter, he’d write the next. He was so competitive! Every time I headed the plot in particular direction, he’d change course and leave the hero in a precarious position. I’d spend the next chapter digging out. I should have known that’s how it would be. I’m sure he was well entertained. The brat. I finally threw in the towel, but somewhere on my hard drive I’m sure I have it all.
Our contacts became less frequent in recent years. I got a cancer diagnosis four years ago, and that can become a full-time job. Two and a half years ago, so did he, although I didn’t know it until his wife reached out the other day to tell me David had died. There was no obituary, just a photo of David standing on a bridge. Poetic.
I thanked her for the sad news that otherwise, I’m sure, had been limited to family. Over the years, I saw the pictures of him and his grandkids. He looked happy and relaxed. I hope he told his grandkids his wonderful stories. My favorite was that when David was a kid in Miami, Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), was training there, and just like in “Rocky” the kids ran with him. The Olympic champion was the Pied Piper.
“What was he like?” I asked.
“Biiiiig!” he said, still in astonishment.
We could make each other laugh, and if we had a spat, we always got past it. Mostly by ignoring it. As I digested the sad news, I remembered the dark call I got quite a few years ago. David was not doing well. He’d gone cold turkey to quit the painkillers.
“I was sitting here and I realized you’re the best friend I have in the world,” he said shakily.
“I’m honored,” I said, a life preserver 1500 miles away in the dark.
Writer. Enigma. Friend.
That friendship lasted to the end.
© Tony Bender, 2024
